An evaluation of the respiratory health status of automotive spray-painters exposed to paints containing hexamethylene di-isocyanates in the greater Durban area

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West Nile Virus Genetic Diversity is Maintained during Transmission by Culex pipiens quinquefasciatus Mosquitoes

Due to error-prone replication, RNA viruses exist within hosts as a heterogeneous population of non-identical, but related viral variants. These populations may undergo bottlenecks during transmission that stochastically reduce variability leading to fitness declines. Such bottlenecks have been documented for several single-host RNA viruses, but their role in the population biology of obligate two-host viruses such as arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses) in vivo is unclear, but of central importance in understanding arbovirus persistence and emergence. Therefore, we tracked the composition of West Nile virus (WNV; Flaviviridae, Flavivirus) populations during infection of the vector mosquito, Culex pipiens quinquefasciatus to determine whether WNV populations undergo bottlenecks during transmission by this host. Quantitative, qualitative and phylogenetic analyses of WNV sequences in mosquito midguts, hemolymph and saliva failed to document reductions in genetic diversity during mosquito infection. Further, migration analysis of individual viral variants revealed that while there was some evidence of compartmentalization, anatomical barriers do not impose genetic bottlenecks on WNV populations. Together, these data suggest that the complexity of WNV populations are not significantly diminished during the extrinsic incubation period of mosquitoes

Authorship, Collaboration, and Influence of Women IS Scholars: Using Social Network Analysis

Research productivity is a critical component of any academic’s career progression. Thus, when trying to understand the underrepresentation issues surrounding women in the information systems (IS) field, research networks are a reasonable starting point. This study aims to understand the trends and patterns of IS women academics’ citation networks that impact their productivity and promotability. Social network analysis (SNA) techniques that analyze bibliographic data extracted from the IS senior scholar’s basket of eight journals between 1990 and 2021 are employed. In addition to this comprehensive article search, author attributes such as gender, affiliation, Ph.D. granting institution, and ethnicity, will be collected. Using these network member attributes, we will analyze the extent of homophily and its influence on forming co-author ties in IS. SNA will help us understand the complexity and potential impacts of authorship and collaboration networks in a diverse and inclusive IS community

Treatment of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children: Understanding Differences in Results of Comparative Effectiveness Studies.

OBJECTIVE: Two cohort studies in patients with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) demonstrated contrasting results regarding the benefit of initial immunomodulatory treatment with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) alone versus IVIG and glucocorticoids. We sought to determine whether application of different MIS-C definitions and differing disease severity between cohorts underlay discrepant results. METHODS: The Overcoming COVID-19 Public Health Surveillance Registry (OC-19) included patients meeting the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) MIS-C definition, whereas the Best Available Treatment Study (BATS) applied the World Health Organization (WHO) definition. We applied the WHO definition to the OC-19 cohort and the CDC definition to the BATS cohort and determined the proportion that did not meet the alternate definition. We compared illness severity indicators between cohorts. RESULTS: Of 349 OC-19 patients, 9.5% did not meet the WHO definition. Of 350 BATS patients, 10.3% did not meet the CDC definition. Most organ system involvement was similar between the cohorts, but more OC-19 patients had WHO-defined cardiac involvement (87.1% vs 79.4%, P = 0.008). OC-19 patients were more often admitted to intensive care (61.0% vs 44.8%, P < 0.001) and more often received vasopressors or inotropes (39.5% vs 22.9%, P < 0.001) before immunomodulatory treatment. CONCLUSION: Greater illness severity and cardiovascular involvement in the OC-19 cohort compared with the BATS cohort, and not use of different MIS-C case definitions, may have contributed to differing study conclusions about optimal initial treatment for MIS-C. Disease severity should be considered in future MIS-C study designs and treatment recommendations to identify patients who would benefit from aggressive immunomodulatory treatment

A multicenter analytical performance evaluation of a multiplexed immunoarray for the simultaneous measurement of biomarkers of micronutrient deficiency, inflammation and malarial antigenemia.

A lack of comparative data across laboratories is often a barrier to the uptake and adoption of new technologies. Furthermore, data generated by different immunoassay methods may be incomparable due to a lack of harmonization. In this multicenter study, we describe validation experiments conducted in a single lab and cross-lab comparisons of assay results to assess the performance characteristics of the Q-plex™ 7-plex Human Micronutrient Array (7-plex), an immunoassay that simultaneously quantifies seven biomarkers associated with micronutrient (MN) deficiencies, inflammation and malarial antigenemia using plasma or serum; alpha-1-acid glycoprotein, C-reactive protein, ferritin, histidine-rich protein 2, retinol binding protein 4, soluble transferrin receptor, and thyroglobulin. Validations included repeated testing (n = 20 separately prepared experiments on 10 assay plates) in a single lab to assess precision and linearity. Seven independent laboratories tested 76 identical heparin plasma samples collected from a cohort of pregnant women in Niger using the same 7-plex assay to assess differences in results across laboratories. In the analytical validation experiments, intra- and inter-assay coefficients of variation were acceptable at &lt;6% and &lt;15% respectively and assay linearity was 96% to 99% with the exception of ferritin, which had marginal performance in some tests. Cross-laboratory comparisons showed generally good agreement between laboratories in all analyte results for the panel of 76 plasma specimens, with Lin's concordance correlation coefficient values averaging ≥0.8 for all analytes. Excluding plates that would fail routine quality control (QC) standards, the inter-assay variation was acceptable for all analytes except sTfR, which had an average inter-assay coefficient of variation of ≥20%. This initial cross-laboratory study demonstrates that the 7-plex test protocol can be implemented by users with some experience in immunoassay methods, but familiarity with the multiplexed protocol was not essential